Movie deal for Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In”

Sandberg’s 2013 best-seller, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” has been acquired by Sony Pictures, according to Deadline Hollywood.

Sheryl Sandberg at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in 2013. (Photo by Bloomberg)

Nell Scovell, who helped Facebook’s chief operating officer write the book, reportedly will write the script. “The film is not a biography of Sandberg,” wrote Deadline Hollywood’s Mike Fleming Jr. “Rather, Scovell will hatch a narrative film from the themes contained within the book.”

Fleming said Sandberg will donate her proceeds from the film project to the Lean In Foundation, whose goal is to help women advance in the workplace.

This isn’t Sony Pictures’ first movie to be inspired by Facebook; the studio also produced “The Social Network,” based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires.”

In her review of “Lean In” for The Chronicle, Liza Mundy wrote that the book tends “to treat women as a monolithic behavioral unit. What’s most interesting is how this book is part of a conversation that has gained urgency and real fire in the past year, as high-profile female leaders engage in a public debate about why women aren’t yet where we ought to be, and prepare for what one might dare to hope is a final assault to take the high ground.”